Progress and new approaches in the systematic integration of lignocellulose biorefinery technologies

Lignocellulose stands as the Earth's most abundant renewable organic carbon resource, representing a key pillar for achieving future carbon neutrality and advancing green biomanufacturing. While significant efforts have been devoted to developing various bioconversion strategies, including pretreatment and enzymatic hydrolysis techniques aimed at overcoming biomass degradation barriers, as well as fermentation and separation purification processes to achieve high-value components. The biorefining of lignocellulose is the coupling and integration of a series of technical units. The core challenge lies in the complex interplay between upstream and downstream units, which can exhibit both synergistic and inhibitory effects. This review provides a comprehensive overview of partial and whole-process integration strategies within lignocellulose biorefining. It further examines the key challenges and underlying mechanisms of unit integration, and focuses on exploring new strategies for deep integration based on novel pretreatment technologies. Finally, it is pointed out that achieving the uniform molecular weight of the lignocellulosic depolymerization products and the efficient utilization of all components will provide a new development path and broad prospects for the construction of the next-generation biorefinery platform.